There is no way that Elizabeth Holmes would voluntarily go to jail. Last week, Holmes’ lawyers filed an 82-page sentencing memorandum (via Gizmodo) to try to get her sentence reduced by making the former Theranos CEO appear better.
In January, a jury decided that Holmes lied to investors when she said that her company had the technology to do hundreds of tests with just a few drops of blood. She received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years on each of the three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.
She was cleared of any wrongdoing when it came to patient fraud, but several people have said that her flawed tests gave them false positives. One woman said the test wrongly told her she was having her fourth miscarriage.
It has been reported that Holmes’ legal team is asking for a sentence of only 18 months of home arrest for the Theranos founder, followed by supervised release and mandatory community service.
Formatting-wise, the paper is reminiscent of a high schooler’s college application, with headings like “Deep Interest in Making the World a Better Place” and “Positive Impact on Others.” The opening statement expresses a desire for the judge to “study Ms. Holmes the human person” before handing down a sentence of any kind.
The document talks about Holmes’ early efforts to help people, like how she wanted to help victims of the Kosovo War during her senior year of high school and how she raised money after the Turkey earthquake in 1999. “We have the power to reform and prevent the evils of this world if we simply study and act,” she said in an interview for her high school newspaper, which is included in the filing.
Holmes’ lawyers are afraid to call her an adult, even when talking about how she acted at Theranos. According to them, she is a “teenager who has four quarters of college under her belt and some laboratory research experience under her belt but no business or managerial expertise.” According to the petition, she was “still a relative newbie to the corporate world” at the time of her conviction at age 34.
130 letters from “individuals who truly know Ms. Holmes’ back up the claims that she is immature, including one from her husband Billy Evans that has caused a stir in the tabloids. It discloses, among other things, that Holmes is presently pregnant and that her husky dog Balto (whom Holmes reportedly told people was a wolf) was killed by a cougar, according to a letter from her partner.
Holmes is portrayed as a helpless victim by Evans, who claims she is “gullible, too trusting, and simply naive,” and that she always gives away the last of her favorite chocolate to visitors.
On Friday, Holmes will find out the verdict. The prosecution is seeking a sentence of fifteen years in jail.
